


For the Earth Has Grown Tired

by thattrainssailed



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: I have no fucking idea, M/M, Post-Apocalypse, short one this time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-24
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2020-09-25 09:22:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20374435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thattrainssailed/pseuds/thattrainssailed
Summary: At the end of the world, the planet does not burn.





	For the Earth Has Grown Tired

At the end of the world, the planet does not burn.**  
**

New York is unrecognisable. Where once there was innumerable vehicles, people rushing from place to place, the city always growing higher in a labyrinth of scaffolding, there is now nothing but breathing stillness. The concrete of former roads is weathered and cracked, a victim lost in some long-ago battle against the elements. The fissures open for stems to emerge from them. Soon-to-be tree trunks spilling from the earth, their roots crawling beneath asphalt to further disturb its grip on the earth. Some have already won their one-sided struggle and their vines clutch at the smooth sides of defunct skyscrapers. Wildflowers peek from the shattered glass of shopfronts.

Movement ripples into what remains of Times Square. A long-dead screen peers down as a doe cautiously emerges from some reclaimed alleyway. Behind it stumbles its fawn, new to this world, unaware of the human footsteps it traces as its hooves adjust to the alternating grass and concrete. They are unafraid.

Elsewhere, beyond the grid of plants that slowly reach for the sun, two bodies move. Central Park is, of course, the thickest part of this newly alive New York - what was originally manicured and carefully shaped has become a forest. The dense undergrowth leaves not even the crude paths forged in the dirt by the last of the tourists. Their journeys were too long ago. The ferns revel in the dappled light, sun falling in through gaps in the branches that stretch across one another above.

Within it are the last two.

They sit on the edge of some moss-rimmed lake deep amongst the trees, leaning against each other, chests rising and falling in time with the breezes that rustle the flora around them. One is dressed ever simply, in some black garments mended time and time again even as the last memories of needle and thread faded from the earth. Beside him, a man with darker skin and more colour. Nothing as extravagant as he might have once owned, but there is no one to impress here. The trees and his beloved embrace him all the same.

They do not know how long it has been since either one of them spoke. Not that long, surely - even centuries have not tired them of one another’s company. Rather, time does not matter any more. It is beyond them. They are beyond it. It has been a long time since any clock on the continent was made useful. Temporality has too been swallowed by roots.

It does not bother them, to be here. The world breathes around them and allows them to remain. It is quiet here.

Magnus and Alexander do not mourn the end of the world. They live.

**Author's Note:**

> [¯\\_(ツ)_/¯](https://thattrainssailed.tumblr.com/)


End file.
